As you look at the cover of this issue of our journal, what do
you see? The first and immediate response is that a house is
burning, or maybe a giant pile of wood. Some might say a barn is
burning or some might think it is a church building. When I show
a picture like this to my students, I nearly always have a
student who says he sees people or animals or ghosts within the
flames. As you look at the door of the building, do you see a
person--or maybe two? As you look between the boards of the
building do you see other people? As you have read this, have
your thoughts or opinions changed since you first glanced at the
cover?

The human imagination is a powerful and creative thing.
Properly applied, it can create beautiful music or art, tell
wonderful and beneficial stories, inspire others, bring joy to
children, peace and beauty to the elderly, and motivate people to
do great things. Wrongly applied it can terrify children, destroy
marriages and homes, bring people to despair, and waste fortunes.

We live in an age when imagination can be portrayed and acted
out in vivid ways. Movies and television are tools which bring
the imaginations of others into our homes in vivid ways.
Pornography, Satanism, violence, and brutality can ruin us.
Claims of miraculous cures, visits by aliens, and ways to get
rich quick can take away our money and our time. Religion can
take a leader's vivid imagination and turn it into a
mind-controlling faith that eventually robs people of life
itself. Christianity has a great apologetic in its teachings
about how to deal with these problems. Not only is there an
antidote for the destructive potential of human imagination, but
there is also a provision of beautiful positive ways in which the
human imagination can be channeled.

Let us explore these evidences:

Christianity gives a standard that excludes
destructive uses of human imagination. Contrary to what
a lot of people think, there are not a lot of taboos in the
Christian system. When you compare the rules and laws enacted by
the government or any human corporation, Christianity promotes an
amazingly free way of life. The prohibitions that do
exist within Christianity almost totally deal with the
destructive uses of human imagination. Consider the things
Christianity opposes--witchcraft, satanism, pornography,
prostitution, prejudice, sexism, slavery, violence, brutality,
etc. If people live by a standard that opposes those uses of
imagination that are destructive, the whole of mankind is
benefited and elevated. Far from being a list of thou shalt
nots, the Christian system offers positive attitude
adjustments that prevent harm.

The Christian system relies upon reason, evidence, and
thought. In spite of the efforts of organized religion
to do the opposite, the Christian system presented in the Bible
offers logical, reasoned, practical arguments for what it tells
its adherents to do. When Jesus taught the people of His day, He
used practical understandable stories called parables to make His
points. Though they are steeped in the time and culture in which
Jesus lived, we today can still understand them and get His
message. Over and over, you will see Jesus and the apostles
saying "What do you think?" or "How would you
answer this?" (Matthew
17:25;
18:12;
21:28;
22:17;
26:66).
The only time this was not done was in the case of overt
miracles. The miracles, however, were not showy money making
extravaganzas. Many of those helped in a miraculous way by Christ
were told to keep it a secret (Matthew
8:4;
16:20;
17:9, Mark
7:36;
8:26, and Luke
5:14;
8:56;
9:21). You either accept or
reject the miracles as a matter of faith, but they were not and
are not political ploys to advance a personality or make money.

The pictures we see of Christianity in the Bible are pictures
of reasoning and arguing the points at hand (
Acts 6:9;
9:29;
15:7;
17:17;
18:14;
19:8-9;
28:29). Christians were told to
"try every spirit" (
1 John 4:1) and to love and serve
others as the focal point of their lives (
John 13:5-17). This is
not wild flaunting of explitive human imagination, but creative
solutions to the problems afflicting mankind.

Christianity offers beautiful ways to express human
imagination. While Christianity works to prevent the
destructive acts of human imagination, it does not seek to
squelch it. History itself teaches us that some of the greatest
artistic, musical, and literary expressions have been done by
Christians expressing their faith and love for God. In the Bible,
we see commands to do constructive things to serve and help our
fellow human beings. The major officers in the Church such as
elders and deacons were instituted to serve. No political office
or hierarchy exists in the Biblical description of how the church
is to be organized--only those who serve in special ways. When
Jesus washed his disciples feet ( John 13:5-17), he gave the full
explanation of how the Christian system was to work: " If I
then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought
to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that
ye should do as I have done to you (verses 14-15)."

Notice that no method of doing these things is given.
Human imagination was given free reign as to how to meet the
needs. When the church in the first century met their first
problem involving how to meet the needs of certain widows, they
came up with their own creative system and did it. James tells us
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is
this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and
to keep himself unspotted from the world "(James 1:27).

A wild imagination will find beautiful ways to teach, serve,
feed, water, visit, encourage, soothe, edify, and love those who
are in need. The flames of that kind of imagination will consume
greed, selfishness, hate, prejudice, need, pain, violence, and
destruction.